


when you're gone, who remembers your name?

by avoidantsumiki



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Character Death, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, POV Second Person, Past Child Abuse, also mentioned is meruem/komugi, i know im going off the map with some of these ships but just listen, mentions of violence against children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 14:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13342944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidantsumiki/pseuds/avoidantsumiki
Summary: Five times a soul mark went grey, and one time it never appeared.





	when you're gone, who remembers your name?

**Author's Note:**

> *offers you a plate of freshly baked angst with a side of weird rarepairs im way too invested in*
> 
> and um yes the title is a hamilton lyric

one - eliza

The day you start working in the underworld, the world of criminals and mobsters and dons, you know there’s a chance. You don’t meet many people, being an "attendant’, being a silent handmaid for some wanted woman or another, and you know that in this world, the chances are slim that whoever he is will make it to his forties. _Squala_ , the characters on your wrist say, _Squala_ , and you go to sleep every night hoping it will still be black in the morning.

Years later, trapped in a hotel room with Neon Nostrade’s father, the other girls whispering about who’s going to live and who’s going to die, you watch as Squala’s name fades to grey, and it’s worse than all the times you imagined it.

*

two - shalnark

You’ve worn a cuff since you were thirteen, since you were old enough to hear the gossip and see the failed relationships of your peers. You didn’t want any part of it, especially not something that was meant to last forever.

It wasn’t that uncommon, in the troupe - even Machi and Paku, the strongest relationship you’d ever been witness to, hid their names from everyone but each other. It’s Paku that you confess it to, one night with a can of beer in hand - you’re scared, awfully, terribly scared.

You should have known, with the way Uvo was so oddly excited to meet you.

You take it off, after Paku, after Kurapika is long gone, leaving so much loss in his wake. Machi sits with you, because she understands. You take it off, and, as you knew it would, your wrist displays _Uvogin_ in grey.

Machi says she’s sorry. You smile at her, bright as you can, and try to shrug it away, but you wear his name like a brand, uncovered, bare, raw, until the day you die.

*

three - machi

It’s been a close-kept secret between the two of you ever since your marks solidified. Hers came first, because she’s older than you, and the others didn’t say much when she started wearing a cuff, but you asked, unapologetically nosy, and she’d looked at you in the kind of assessing way that she hadn’t since you met.

When she showed you, you understood, the double kick of two names, and one of them (the first, you note) being yours. _Machi_ , it says, and you just nod, and the two of you wait until your mark shows up and proves you hers.

You look at your wrist intermittently after she dies, her name greyed out and hopeless, but you don’t think as much about you or her as you do about the other name she had. You had the chance to know her and love her, to cover her back in a fight and stitch her back up afterwards, to kiss her breathless and hear her say your name all low and fond. Whoever the other one is, they’ll never have that.

You don’t often waste energy on feeling sorry for people, but it’s easier to ache for someone faceless and unknown than for the gaping hole Pakunoda left behind in you.

*

four/five - shaiapouf and neferpitou

The two of you think it’s normal, really, until Youpi’s hatched.

Pouf inspects his wrist with interest, _Kena_ displayed there, black against red. Youpi suggests it’s because of his skin colour, dark where yours and Pouf’s are pale, but you suspect something more ominous.

When a snot-nosed teenager introduces herself as Komugi, and everyone’s eyes go wide, you understand first, knowing that her name, echoed on your King’s wrist, is coloured black. Leol waking up one morning to his previously-dark _Heron_ grey only confirms your theory.

Pouf finds you, eventually, having left Youpi to guard the King. “Ours are dead, aren’t they?” he asks, but it’s not really a question.

“I think so,” you reply anyway.

He tosses his hair, as if to brush away his _Baise_ , someone he has no cause to mourn, never even knew, but you understand that it’s not that easy. You’re learning, watching the King and Komugi, what the names are for - you suspect Pouf may not have put it together yet, but you have. You wonder what Baise was like, if they’d have taken Pouf’s melodrama, his possessiveness, his callousness in stride, the way you and Youpi have learned to, if they’d maybe even shared these traits.

“Well, it only means we can serve the King better,” he says after a few quiet moments, purposeful, and he strides off, leaving you with the impression that he knows exactly what the names are meant to mean, and is convincing himself he’s better off this way.

The following days don’t leave you much time for wondering, but as you look up at a child in a man’s body, growth fuelled by rage and despair and the burning desire to kill you, as you realise you won’t survive this night, you wonder who Pakunoda was, if they died scared and proud and a fighter, like you, if they really would have loved you.

*

+1 - killua

You don’t remember your mark getting branded over. It happened when you were young, too young for memory, but you recognise the twisted lesson in it - you belong to no one but your own last name.

So it’s awkward, when Gon asks so brightly about your mark, but not in the way it would be awkward for anyone else, so soon after meeting. You just hold up your wrist with a shrug, showing him the scarred skin. “It’ll never show up, now,” you say. “Zoldyck thing.”

He frowns. “That’s awful, Killua!”

“Eh, it’s fine,” you evade. “Who wants fate telling you what to do, anyway? Just means I get to choose for myself.”

Gon chews on his bottom lip for a bit, after that, but then he smiles again, and nods. You like it better when he smiles, and you forget completely to ask him if he’s got one, yet.

You’re not supposed to see it. He’s blocking an attack from Knuckle, and his cuff breaks off, falls to the ground. You don’t even notice, at first, he’s moving too fast - but when Knuckle leaves, and Gon is on the ground, arms spread to either side, you see your own name, feel your stomach turn over, and very carefully do not freak out. You know, just like you said years ago, that you got to choose, that you chose him, and would have kept choosing him even if you never saw _Killua_ on his skin.

Later, you’ll wish you’d said something, in that moment, because the weeks that follow don’t give you time, and then you almost lose him, and then you have to leave him, feeling the wrongness and inevitability of it, and your sister happy by your side, her own wrist scarred over just like yours, helps you forget.

You’ll meet again, someday. Maybe then, you’ll know what to say.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!
> 
> one day ill get around to writing full fics for baisepouf and paku/pitou.......


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